


Home

by magpie_03



Series: Down the mountain range of my left-side brain [16]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Depression, M/M, Self-Harm, Song Lyrics, Suicide Attempt, Trigger Warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-07-27 09:49:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20043991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie_03/pseuds/magpie_03
Summary: This story has a big trigger warning for self-harm, suicidal thoughts and depression. Take care.





	Home

_Home_ isn't just a word. _Home_ is a feeling. It's hidden inside Tyler's bones, sleeping inside his mind, buried underneath ayers and layers of medications that make him feel like he's never fully asleep, never truly at rest. He's sleepwalking, existing, surviving, as a shell, as a body. Never asleep. Never fully awake. He's inbetween, between two worlds, two lives. Can't go forwards, can't go back. He's stuck, stuck in sickness.

_Home_ used to mean home. _Home_ used to mean watching TV together and arguing about the program. _Home_ used to mean roaming through the neighborhood on your bike. Home used to mean having a body you understand. _Home_ used to mean feeling safe in your house, in your body, in your bones.

Now _home_ is covered in sickness. This house is where he became sick, he had his first seizure at dinner so many years ago. This is where he was sick for a long time. This is where he continues to be sick. This is where he returns when he's too sick, hospital-sick, but his parents still believe he can get better when he's home. Hospital-sick. Homesick. As if that word means anything anymore. As if there's sense in sickness, meaning.

He's Tyler, he's sick. He's sick, he's Tyler. _Home_ is where he became sick, _home_ is where he continues to be sick. It all blurs into one another, sickness, side-effects, medications, hospital stays and there's you on the other side, trying to stay alive and killing yourself in the process.

You're more than your sickness.

Your sickness is more than you.

_Home_ is where old patterns come back.

"Self-harm," is what Tyler's parents say. 

"Coping mechanisms" is what Tyler's neurologist says.

"Safety behaviors" is what Tyler's psychiatrist says.

Tyler says nothing.

He doesn't want his parents to see how sick he really is, how far he's gone again. But during the last few weeks he used all his energy, all his strength to keep it up for Josh. Keep it inside. He couldn't fake being healthy so he faked functionality instead. A good night's sleep. Stable moods. <strike>Sure, a couple of seizures too, but that meant nothing.</strike> Three meals a day. 

He knew the looks Josh gave him when he laughed to mask the silence, when he stayed up half the night anyway. Lying to Josh took it all out of him. It tore him apart.

"I'm good, Josh. Go on vacation with your family."

He's on vacation, too. He needs time away from himself, from this mind, this body. It's summer, after all. Vacation time.

Tyler packs shirts with long sleeves. Sweatpants. Jeans. Hoodies. Razorblades, because is mom still hides all the knifes.

They don't trust him.

Tyler doesn't trust himself, either.

The word "treatment-resistant" puts pressure on everything. There's pressure to make his parents proud, which means less worried. Pressure to make Josh proud, to share his part in their relationship. Pressure not to be so sick even though he's always so sick. In ways that show, in ways that are invisible. The pressure that makes him cheat and lie and manipulate. There's always one thing you can do when life becomes too heavy to bear: make it worse by taking it all out on yourself. Destroy yourself, counter horror with horror. Tyler's epilepsy is treatment-resistant, it makes him lose control again and again and now he's taking it back, again and again. Cheeking meds. Staying up all night. Looking for new places to cut himself.

The feeling never gets old.

This is control.

<strike>It isn't. </strike>

This is you.

<strike>This isn't your illness</strike>.

This isn't you.

<strike>This is your illness.</strike>

The pressure to cheek his meds because he wants to be off them. Tyler used to say that he wants to be like healthy people, like the normal people.

Now he just wants to die.

Start with something you can control.

Start with something you can wreck.

Tyler wants to die.

"It's all about the little steps," his mom says. Lazy days spent in the park with Josh. Being able to watch TV without getting overwhelmed. Being able to take a walk without feeling like you're going to collapse. Being able to read a book again. They even played a gig at a small local coffee shop right before Josh left. When he's well enough to play, performing and singing in front of an audience fills him up in the best way possible. It makes him feel nourished, physically, emotionally, spiritually.

This performance hollowed him out.

He never speaks about his epilepsy at performances. He's fine with being seen as weird when he's shaking his head or screaming but he doesn't want the label _epileptic_ stuck to his music, too. He gave it all, all he had left, streaming into his microphone, hammering on his piano but he didn't feel it. He was empty. Not even the sight of Josh banging on his drums could make him smile. He felt the odd looks he got when he took his meds right before the performance. He was already on stage when Josh handed him his pillsbox, he can swallow the pills in one go by now. The audience probably thought he was on drugs, that he needs counselling. Tyler doesn't care. His is body, his mind are rejecting him every step of the way. His music is what stays, what will be left behind one day.

It's about the small steps and it's about running until your lungs burst, until your muscles scream.

The guilt when you miss your seizure meds, when things become heavy again, and you can feel yourself slipping back. _This is dangerous and stupid and you know it_ but you can't stop yourself, not now. You're not supposed to do this, you're not supposed to _be_ like this and yet you are. Your heart is split in half. The Tyler he's presenting to the outside world. A smile that doesn't make his eyes crinkle, a smile that screams_ help me please_. A smile that whispers _liar liar liar_ into his ears all day long. The Tyler on the inside. He's scared, scared of being sent away to hospital again. He still dreams about it, about the time on the closed psychiatric ward after he tried to kill himself. About the many admissions to the neurology unit. About doctors rolling their eyes when they his scars. Nights spent in the ER. Orane juice in plastic cups. Memories like a scream inside his mind. He's scared, scared of himself, scared of the world, and that fear makes him crumble.

_ I'm better I'm good now I'm better._ Smiling smiling smiling. A lie, a big fat lie. He can't get better by getting worse. This doesn't make any sense, nothing is. But he doesn't know how to get better, not with the big silence, the big nothing inside him. He doesn't dare to.

He wanders through the house at night, careful not to make a sound. He's terrified by what's inside him, what has come alive again.

The big silence.

The big nothing.

Tyler stares at the mirror, eyes lingering over his body.

_The only thing holding me back is me_

Tremendous power. Tremendous fear.

"I'm scared" Tyler whispers and the words don't even make it out, they stay inside to grow and fester. They hurt in ways he can't begin to describe. In ways he won't ever be able to put into words.

Darkness. Silence. It comes alive when the world doesn't move, when the shadows underneath Tyler's eyes turn from blue to purple.

There's nothing around the corner. A big nothing, a big silence. A darkness that brings more seizures, seizures your body survives because that's all your body does: it outlives itself. The seizures become bigger again, terrifying again. They make Tyler groan, scream and shudder. Barely an hour into sleep and Tyler is experiencing his first generalized seizure. By now the entire family is up, too. Zack is always the first to run into his room. He'll never get used to seeing Tyler trash around in his bed, limbs shaking like a tree in a storm. Zack digs his fingernails into his palms. 55 seconds. Zack holds his breath everytime. The seizure stopped before his lungs burst.

_Tyler will be okay. He will be okay._

Tyler's pain is his pain.

His dad turns Tyler on his side once the seizure is over. His hoodie and sweatpants have slipped, they reveal the skin around his hipbones, skin covered in cuts. It's impressive almost, no, it's absolutely terrifying to see the exhausted look on Tyler's face, the pain he puts himself through, and yet there's this focus still inside of him, this drive inside Tyler to destroy himself, a focus that is endless and relentless. Zack saw it from the moment Tyler came back home. Smiling, smiling, smiling, but the smile didn't make his eyes crinkle. Zack was scared, deeply scared, of what he saw in his brother's smile, in his eyes. Emptiness. Loneliness. Recklessness, if you looked twice. And if you looked for a third time Tyler would smile and say it's nothing.

Tyler seemed so far away. As if a part of him had already left the planet. As if a part of him had already died.

Smiling, smiling smiling.

He saw death in Tyler's eyes.

Strange things happened to Tyler's pillbox, too. Josh told them about the meds routine, crushing pills, mixing them with chocolate pudding. But Tyler insisted on managing the meds on his own. Epilepsy meds, antidepressants, emergency meds for seizures, vitamin B12, B6, D. "I swear you need a degree to sort this out," Tyler's dad mumbles as he saw all the different pills in the pillbox. "Tyler, when are you supposed to take these? With food? With water? I have no idea how to do this to be honest. Can you wait until your mom gets home? She is much better with these things."

Tyler smiles.

"I'm responsible now, dad. Don't worry, I can do this on my own."

Zack saw Tyler's hands tremble. No one could prove anything but the pills just disappared.

"There's more. It's on his stomach, too. His arms." His dad examines Tyler's skin as if it was made of paper. He's trying not to cry too, he can hear it in the way his dad tries to control his voice but his fingers are trembling, shaking. Zack will never forget the night when Tyler tried to kill himself and he saw his dad break down.

They all know Tyler is sick, he's always sick, but they saw the grin on Tyler's face, too.

Smiling, smiling, smiling

Zack can't feel his nails in his palms anymore. He can't feel his body, can't feel having a body in the first place.

Tyler's pain is his pain.

Tyler is his big brother, the best big brother anyone could have asked for even though he won't believe it, he never did. And Zack is the younger brother who had to grow up too fast.

Back in his room, Zack takes a big breath and looks at his palm covered in puckered, white half-moons. Sad smiles, Tyler smiles, upside down.

The next morning.

You hate yourself and your body hates you right back. Bone-crushing fatigue. Every single muscle hurts and is sore. There's a new wound on the right side of your cheek, one that makes eating painful. He can't look anybody in the eye. It all came out, like it always does, and now you're back to square one. His mom already called the hospital, her voice becoming louder and louder as she fought to get an emergency appointment.

"No, we can't wait for six months. No, not four either. We can't afford to wait, okay? We need to come in now."

It seems forever ago when you got stitches in the ER. That was in January. Now it's August. One step forward. Two steps back. One step forward. Ten steps back. Back, back, back, it's all backwards now. Tyler wants to grow back into the earth where he belongs.

He wants to be buried so he can sing to the sky.

"You're not the first patient who's non-compliant, Tyler."

Tyler frowns at the epilepsy nurse who takes his blood. By now they have a steady nurse-patient relationship, one could say. Tyler comes in and is late. The nurse barks at him for taking so little responsibility. Tyler shrugs. Tyler comes in and lies about his meds. The nurse barks at him for taking no responsibility whatsoever. Tyler shrugs. Tyler comes in with new stitches. The nurse sighs. Tyler shrugs. Tyler comes in and has a seizure. The nurse sighs and calls the neurologist. Tyler wakes up, sometimes with a needle in his arm for emergency meds, sometimes not. He goes home. He shrugs.

The entire epilepsy team knows his family by now. And Josh, who turned into everyone's favorite.

"Even the neurologists like you, Josh. That says a lot."

His parents and Josh have driven him to the hospital countless times for appointments. Now that Zack has his license he's taking up the driving duty, too. What better way to gain experience than to accompany your brother to the hospital where every single parking space is taken, parking costs a million bucks an hour, ambulances rush off, and you get bonus points if there's a seizure in the car.

Now it's just the nurse and Tyler. Silence, sterile, as if someone poured desinfectant down his throat. The nurse raises her eyebrows at his body, jittery and pale because of meds withdrawal.

"You need to find other ways to express your anger about the epilepsy. This will only land you in hospital again and again."

Tyler shrugs. He knows that technically, he's blessed to have nurses and doctors who still care about him. Who see him as a human being, an individual who's going through an incredibly difficult and rough time in their life. "We're all affected, the entire team is," Tyler heard one of the nurses say to his mom one time. "Tyler's been with us for so long. We care about him, we really do."

"Treatment-resistant" doesn't just mean pressure; it's also a way for doctors to write you off as a lost cause, particularly when it is combined with "non-compliant." Revolving door patient. One step forward, two steps back. Back, back, back.

"We can't help you." "Tyler heard it again and again. His case is too complex. Too difficult. Difficult to treat, the illness and him, the patient. They blur into one, again and again. Fear, pain, loneliness. There's no room for emotion in medical terms, in _refractory nature of your condition_ and _non-compliance_ and _psychiatric comorbidities_. These terms are heavy, on the heart, on the chest. They weigh you down. They squeeze the life right out of you.

"We can't help you."

You're down, far below, but no one can hear you scream.

At the epilepsy clinic he's Tyler. Just Tyler.

The nurse's voice travels through the room as she rummages through the drawers.

"Okay, this needle is supposed to be less painful. I'm trying my best."

They both know he has shitty veins. Some are tiny, some are blown, and the majority just starts to roll as soon as they see a needle approaching_. _Tyler can feel the kindness in nurse's voice, the kindness that makes her use a butterfly needle. Most nurses just huff when they see his scars and ram the needle right into his hand. The kindness that makes her stay silent as she takes his hand and wraps the turniquet around his wrist. In the neon light of the room, the cold, unforgiving hospital light, the scars can't be unseen. Scars that don't look like accidents. And neither do the new cuts.

The nurse sighs before she pokes the needle through his skin, going for the biggest vein, the best shot. His hand reminds him of a leaf, a leaf with puckered white scars on the back of his hand. A leaf that once needed IVs to stay alive. A leaf that shook and trembled in the face of life, in the face of death.

A body that shakes like a tree in a storm.

He knows the nurse wants to give him a hug, he can feel it, but she can't because this is supposed to be a sterile field. You can't get close to a person with these gloves on, with this illness inside the room. Stick needles into soft flesh, that's the closest you will ever get to a person here.

For the first time, the distance, the chasm between him and the others, him and the healthy people, feels like a relief. He won't get a hug. He won't have to lie.

"Huh, this is strange. The vein looked quite promising. Okay, I've got to move this a little bit..."

The needle went straight into the vein but nothing is happening. Just like with everything else, his body shuts down.

"My body is doing its best."

Tyler grins. The nurse shoots him a look. There is no joy in his voice, no humor.

The nurse starts to move the needle around and the pain washes over him, sharp, stinging. A promise. He can already see himself ripping the needle out and watching his body bleed until there's nothing left.

Pain becomes a promise, becomes protection.

"Okay, this will be good enough, hopefully."

A splash of red starts to travel through the tube. His body outlived itself yet again.

You hate yourself and your body hates you right back.

"My body is like a cockroach. It's refusing to die," Tyler giggles.

Pain, promise, protection. Again and again and again.

"Don't give me that smile, Tyler."

He sniffs.

They have a steady nurse-patient relationship, one could say. Tyler can shrug, yell, cry, or seize in this room. Maybe laugh, just like he used to. But he can't lie to her.

The nurse kneels down in front of him and rubs his shoulder. 

"Things will get better, Ty. Okay? Don't give up."

Tyler shrugs. He has nothing to say. Nothing to promise. Not without becoming a cheater and a liar again, not without hating himself and his body even more.

Back in the waiting room. He's wearing a t-shirt. <strike>Sure, it's August, the weather is a nightmare, hot and humid and everyone is uncomfortable in stuffy waiting rooms.</strike>

He's wearing a t-shirt and he's wearing it deliberately. No one can hate himself the way Tyler does but the looks still hurt. He can feel them, all of them. On his scars, his pale face, wobbly gait. _This is an epilepsy clinic_, he wants to scream at them. _This is real. This is what it's like._

He can feel the starers, every single one of them, and he's bitting his cheeks not to scream. The wound inside his mouth burns and stings.

Bloodwork is followed by another lecture from your neurologist. He's got the test results right in the room, no time to wait around and wait for Tyler to get sicker. Usually, his body does it all on his own.

_The importance of compliance in treatment-resistant epilepsy._ The dullest lecture ever. He talks and talks, going on and on and on.

Tyler stares out the window. He's ripping the plaster on his hand off before he puts it back on. Off. On. Off. On. Off. The pain comforts him. It's a pain he knows how to deal with, it's pain he understands. A form of pain that distracts him from theway his mom nods and swallows. She made notes to discuss questions with the doctor, just like Josh. There are always notes, uncertainties, things to discuss but Tyler has nothing to say. There's just a big nothing, a big silence inside him.

His mom's voice quivers. He can feel her pain, too, a pain he won't ever understand. It took him some time to see his parents as parents again. At his sickest, right when he came back from the hospital after he tried to kill himself, he saw them as prison guards, nothing more, nothing left. It took some time and now he's none the wiser. Now their pain makes him cry, too, during the day, when he thinks no one can see him. At night, when he hopes no one can hear him.

"Are these fresh wounds?"

The neuro's voice brings him back. Tyler stares at his wrists. He scratched the skin again without even noticing and now the wounds are starting to bleed. Normally, Josh would be here to take his hands in his but now it's just him. Him and the silence inside him. The big silence. The big nothing.

_<strike>Scratch scratch scratch</strike> _

_Pain pain pain_

Someone takes his wrists in his hands and examines the wounds. The neurologist, now right in front of him. There's no kindness in his eyes. Just concern. Doctor's kindness.

He's pushing his sleeves up. Old scars and new cuts. Layers and layers of pain.

Tyler zones out again. He doesn't want to have this conversation.

He has nothing to say.

Voices from afar as if he's underwater and they're above the surface. They have survived, he's still down below. The neuro asks his mom something, his mom answers, gesticulating, throwing her hands in the air. The neuro again, now he's talking with his hands too, hands that use air quotation marks. Crazy, quote-unquote. His mom answers, one of her hands on Tyler's back. The neuro strokes his chin, eyes on Tyler's file. He gives his mom a long look. Eyebrows raised. _Are you sure you can do this at home. With him.  
_

On the way back home. Tyler stays silent. It would have been a lot easier had the neuro and his mom screamed at him because he could have screamed right back. But their silent disappointment is too heavy to handle, too heavy to bear. He can feel his muscles trembling, his bones aching.

There's no sound to hide behind.

They leave, with a referral to the psychiatric clinic. He's ditched back and forth. Neurology, psychiatry. The doctors know him by now.

Two large plasters on his wrists. Tyler wants to laugh. As if a bit of gauze would keep him from cutting himself.

There's no humor in his voice, no joy.

His parents take over, again. They're managing his meds again, down to the vitamins he needs because the antiepileptic drugs keep his body from absorbing vitamins. Vitamin D, B12, B6. You don't care. You know you're sick. You don't need proof anymore.

Tablets are changed to liquids, to syrup, because it's nearly impossible to fake-take liquid. Well, you could spit it back out or empty the glass into the plant on the kitchen table. Maybe there's an epileptic orchid out there.

"No. You're staying in the kitchen after meds."

Tyler can't look his mom in the eye.

He doesn't want this.

<strike>He does.</strike>

He's in control.

<strike>He isn't.</strike>

<strike>He hates his parents for doing this to him.</strike>

He hates himself for doing this, to himself, to his family, to everyone around him._ Home_ feels heavy. Thick silence all around him. Powerlessness. It's like walking underwater with weights on your arms and legs. You can't come back up again even if you wanted to. <strike>You do. You don't. You do.</strike>

"We do this because we love you, Ty. We won't let you kill yourself this way."

He's no longer a son or a patient. He's a nothing. Again. He's sick and he's getting all the attention which makes him hate himself and his behaviors all the more. His parents are supervising him during med time, in the morning, in the evening, before bedtime. Someone is always in the house now. Someone is driving him to the hospital, someone is managing his appointments. Someone is there to make sure he actually shows up to the appointments. He can hear his parent's fighting, whisper-yelled discussions at night because having four kids, hospital appointments, two jobs and family life aren't compatible with each other. Tyler feels not incompatible, with his life, with this world.

His parents, worried and sad. During the day, when they think no one can see them. At night, when they think no one can hear them.

The guilt drags Tyler down. His siblings have to cope on their own, too. Again. No one to pick them up from school or from a game or from the cinema. Sure, Zack probably, but he has a life of his own, too. They all have their lives, their plans. Tyler has hospital appointments.

The guilt weighs heavy on his chest.

<strike>This is your fault.</strike>

<strike>It isn't.</strike>

<strike>It is.</strike>

Safety behaviors. Silence is safe, sickness is safe. The big silence, the big nothing is something he knows.

"Tyler? Did you listen to me?"

Tyler blinks. His psychiatrist looks at him expectantly.

He shrugs. He doesn't know, he zoned out again. He didn't want to, not this time but he hates himself and his brain hates him right back.

"Things can become okay again, Tyler. You've got to allow yourself to feel that way."

Tyler presses his fingernails into his palms.

It's taken three heartbeats, four seconds, and a lifetime to come back.


End file.
